Word association: When I say Bob Hogue you think:

a) Basketball player and coach.

b) Sportscaster.

c) Politician, former state senator.

d) TV and radio sports show host.

e) Athletic conference commissioner.

f) Romance novelist.

You're going with "a" through "e"? Nope. It's all of the above.

Hogue indeed serves as commissioner of the Pacific West Conference for NCAA Division II, hosts "Pacwest Magazine" on TV and radio, and played high school basketball before becoming a play-by-play announcer and then a sportscaster at KHON-TV from 1988 to 1999. He represented District 24 (Kailua, Käne'ohe) from 2000 to 2006.

And last month, he released his first novel, "Sands of Lanikai" (Island Heritage), which he describes, with a twinkle of humor, as a "historical fiction romance mystery suspense thriller." It is all that, with an element of mystical realism as well.

The book tells the story of a directionless young man, Paul Sands, who arrives in the Islands just weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Before he steps down the gangplank of the Lurline, he is confronted by tragedy, and the action doesn't stop until a month has flown by, by which time he has learned a great deal about Island culture, and himself, found purpose and the courage not to quit, and met the woman he will marry.

The book weaves fact and fiction. Its characters include Gov. John Burns, then a homicide cop, and convicted German spy Otto Kuehn, whose home in Kalama Tract still stands. Hogue reviewed every Honolulu newspaper published between Nov. 15 and Dec. 31, 1931, and read a history of Kailua, in addition to interviewing people who had lived through that time. He laced the book with accurate details (the movie the young couple attends really did play the local theater) cushioned by make-believe people and events.

Hogue said writing the novel was just like giving birth to a baby — only the gestation period was four years. He recalls the day when the idea sprang upon him.

On July 4, 2005, he was sitting on Kailua Beach, his eyes wandering over the curve of sand, the mountains behind, Mokapu Peninsula to the north — and he began to think about what it was like on Dec. 7 as stunned Kailuans watched Japanese planes dive-bombing the Marine base. He wondered, too, what it might have been like if the Japanese had succeeded in taking the Islands.

He got up, brushed the sand off, went home and wrote two chapters in a day.

He had always wanted to write a novel, had even started one, but couldn't figure out where to take it. His idea this time was not, at first, to have it published, but just to complete the task, and share it with his family and friends.

But then one night his daughter Becky, a Columbia University student, called, waking him from a sound sleep and crying happy tears. She had read the manuscript.

"Daddy," she said, "this book is you!" Hogue's love of the Islands and Kailua/ Lanikai in particular, his passion for history, his appreciation of flowers and films, the sports theme — "all the things you love are in here," she said.

"That meant more to me than anything," he said. "That I had touched someone so close to me." But it also made him think that perhaps the manuscript might be worthy of publication.

Long story short, that draft succeeded in getting him a publisher, Dale Madden of Island Heritage, but only on the condition that he reshape the manuscript completely.

The book went through many permutations, beginning as a single-voice journal by Paul Sands about his Dec. 7 experiences and ending as a fully fleshed-out novel.

Hogue laughs at himself now. The original book, he said, didn't even have a bad guy. As it stands now, the bad guy opens the book and is a figure of mystery and intrigue throughout.

Working with various editors, he learned to build in the motivation, the complexity and the personal growth that make characters interesting.

Teased about having made his character a basketball player (like Hogue), whose knees were injured playing (like Hogue), he said his own experiences allowed him to see how Paul Sands might turn a character corner.

"My dad was a coach and he instilled in me that you never quit," he said. However, "I had seen so many athletes over the years who just become so self-absorbed in their victimization that they just get stuck and give up.

"It struck me as a very believable thing (to have Sands lose his way after his injuries on the court)."

Hogue has not one qualm about having written a romance.

"I've been told all my life that I look at life through rose-colored glasses and, you know what, I like that," he said. "I like good people. When I read or watch movies I want to see good people. They make me smile, and if I tear up and cry, that's the best.

"I've read this book hundreds of times, and I cry at the end every time."